>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> evan osnos is here. he's a staff writer at the "new yorker" magazine. he was the china correspondent from 2005 to 2013.

he has written a book about his experiences in a country that is undergoing rapid change. it is called "age of ambition." george packer has said that evan osnos gives us 21st-century china the way the best journalists gave us the gilded age. i'm pleased to have him back at this table. welcome. george was rather complimentary, wasn't he? >> he knows the gilded age. the first one and the one we are going through now so i appreciate the comment. >> why's it hard to define the ambition of china? >> it operates on two levels. you have the national ambition, the one we see every day over here. it is the one pushing china out into the south and east china sea. it is a remarkable thing to see. the one that is harder to see, the one you see on the ground when you live in china and talk to people is the ambition in their personal lives and private

lives and their families which is to transform themselves to this economic metamorphosis. >> you have been interested in this for a while. the individual life. >> that's right. that is what surprised me when i got there. everything i learned about china and studied was about the collective experience. the confucian society, a socialist country. i got there and found that people were not talking about groups, they were talking about themselves. that forced me to rethink how i understood how the society was organized. >> you look at those profiles which is part of the book. let me talk about the broader picture first. this book, it says something about china. you and your publisher looked into the idea of the book being published in china. >> that's right.

>> it's not being published in china. >> it is not. i thought about it. some chinese publishers got in touch with me and said they wanted to publish it. and, there is a big market for foreign authors in china being published and translated. i would love the idea of reaching chinese readers because it feels like a fair bargain. if i can give back to them a story that i have pulled from them. in order to publish it in chinese, it became clear that i would have to make cuts to the book about dissidents or political things. >> they cut everybody, including the president. >> exactly. everyone's book if it going to be sold in china has to pass through the censors. the cuts would be very small or some cases very big. i decided i didn't want to cut it because i thought i would be giving an unfair picture to the

chinese reader of what matters. >> do you have a certain kind of conceit that it will get there? >> i'm quite sure it will get there anyway. i'm publishing it in taiwan. >> why the title -- "dividing between chasing fortune, truth and faith?" >> those are the three engines of what is propelling china at the moment. if you think about it, the one that is most apparent to us is the search for fortune. everybody gets up in the morning and says how will i get one step closer to that prosperous lifestyle. why not? they should. that is a universal element. as they accumulate property, one of the things they discover is they can no longer afford to be ill-informed because you have to know who is setting the rules and where they are going. all of a sudden, you have this demand for truth. that fed this investigative impulse which was never possible in china. i met these great reporters and editors who were doing incredible work under difficult conditions. >> they're totally truthful and candid in private conversation. >> they will tell you a lot of things. a lot of the stories we get as western journalists are tipped off by the people in the chinese press that would love to write the story. the third piece is faith.

faith is what happens after you have satisfied your basic questions about the law and politics. what is my role as a citizen, family member, private person, or a human? the big existential questions and people are going out and answering it themselves. you have the high tycoons and you have everything in between. >> when did the new china begin? >> 1978, and that is a key moment. that is when deng xiaoping liberated the country from socialist economics. they held on to mao and the imagery of the party and the people's republic of china. what is so interesting is the word that chinese people use when they describe that moment, the moment when the collective farms and factories were disbanded. the word means in chinese to literally unfetter a prisoner. >> to release.

>> exactly. it is such a visceral picture and that is how it feels for people. that is the day when they were sent out on their own to figure out what it meant to be chinese. >> why did deng xiaoping decide to do this? who educated him? >> he is a remarkable story. in the end, it was survival that drove his decision. he recognized he was not an economist, but he was smart and surrounded himself with great economic minds and practical people. they realized that the mao era of economics was leading them to ruin. in 1978, china had a lower standard of living than north korea per capita income. if they continued in that path, everything they fought for would be lost. what he realized was that he could relinquish one part which was the fantasy of a certain kind of collective economy that was never going to materialize, but they can hold onto power. what he did was strike this unusual bargain which was this authoritarian system with this

raucous free-market society. trying to put those into a single portrait -- >> we will let you have a better china as long as you let us rule it. >> that has been the bargain. it sometimes works. >> how do you define what it means to be chinese today? what is the operative philosophy? >> i do think there is a a shared american idea. it would be something like liberty. in china today, there is no single shared idea. i think that makes people uncomfortable. what the government is trying to do is to say the shared idea should be renewal, rejuvenation. it should be the flag. i think people are not convinced. if you talk to people about what

they call the chinese dream, this is now an official slogan. xi jinping got to power and very smartly said we need better marketing. he said we are now in pursuit of the chinese dream, an elegant solution for some of their propaganda problems. everybody interprets it slightly differently. the conclusion i reached after thinking about this was the thing that people are looking for now in however they define it is dignity. for some people, dignity comes in the form of enormous financial success. finally, they have arrived, but for other people, dignity comes in the ability to have something small but to have it be yours. that is a change because in the past there was not much room in chinese cosmology for individual dignity. young people want to live a certain kind of life. >> what are the contradictions and the fault lines? >> they are a few specific things. you cannot talk about china today without talking about the gap between the rich and poor. that is not unique to china. we are dealing with a lot of the same questions but the

difference is the chinese is run by the same communist party and creates a day-to-day contradiction that people are confronted with. the environment is an enormous issue. when we probably talked about this for the first time four years ago, i think it would've been much lower on the list of priorities. today, when you talk to any chinese political leader, they would say dealing with the environment has become a critical issue because they are taking people that are not political in nature, middle-class folks that don't care about joining demonstrations, but they would join if it would help the health of their kids. >> whenever i talk to somebody who has seen xi jinping, they say the following. what i have to do is do something about corruption. do something about the environment and do something to

ensure a stable growth pattern. those are the mandates i have. >> you have seen him put corruption at the top of the list. i think corruption is the meta issue for all the things we're talking about because it is about a government that has ceased to function for the purposes of benefiting the individual citizen. that is the way it is perceived. that is the way he has framed it. he is trying to hit the reset button on his own government's performance and is saying we are going to reorient so we are in service of the public. it is hard to do that. >> how much self-analysis are they prepared to engage in? the party and the standing committee and the people influencing decisions? >> they are prepared to do an operational self-analysis, but not the kind of metaphysical self-analysis which would undermine their political hold. what he is doing right now with corruption is real. he is going after people at the highest levels. you will see big arrests the former security chief who was head of the state oil company -- there have been rumors he would be the highest

ranking person to go down. >> it would pretty severe. >> he would likely go to prison for the rest of his life or the death penalty. he has not been formally indicted yet. >> that is the talk. >> i was in beijing and shanghai last month and that is what everybody is waiting for. i think the other piece of this is the corruption campaign has its limits. you heard recently that the former president sent the message to the president saying let's not get -- let's not go overboard. >> why is he wanting that? >> he is concerned if you go after -- that demonstrates that nobody is immune. he was as strong as dick cheney was in his day. >> isn't that the point to say that nobody is immune? >> that means if you are another official, that makes you uncomfortable. that breaks the rules of the game.

what they are doing by going after him is to say everybody is fair game. it is basically establishing that he is going to push this campaign as far as he wanted to go. senior leaders have a reason not to want this to become full-scale intraparty workfare. that would be disastrous. >> they did the study about his family and how much he made while he was premier. anything happen to him because of all the press? >> he left office and he is a private citizen. it tends to be that china's political culture is that after you leave office, you stop having a public role. you still maintain some private role. the word in beijing is that experience in which the new york times disclosed that his family had accumulated around $2 billion in assets over the course of his time in office, that was obviously damaging to

him and his reputation in the west. it also put him in a complicated position in chinese politics because the way that was interpreted was that he doesn't have control over his own family. if he can keep his own cousins and siblings and wife from profiting from his name, this is a sign of weakness personally. i think that has been damaging to him. >> tell me about some of the individual stories about people here. >> one of the ones that i think the person who gets written about the least. the guy who i write about in here nobody knows is a guy who was a young english teacher. a chinese son of a coal miner. i learned an enormous amount by spending time with him because he is a guy by all reasonable chinese metrics should be happy today. his life is unimaginably better than his father's. his father spent 30 years underground. michael, as he calls himself,

can go today online and watch anything he wants. he can read in english. when i talked him about his life, he is frustrated that he cannot get traction. this is a subtle thing that doesn't come through everyday in the gdp numbers. he feels like he is frustrated. the opportunity that existed for his peer group 10 years ago is narrowing. this is a real problem for china because after all, the bargain that was struck was your life will continue to get better every year. they are trying to figure out how to continue to do that at the same time the economy is slowing down. he told me once -- why is i should just be like everyone else? by which he means, i have an individual sense of my own ambitions and desires. just because i was born poor doesn't mean i should be satisfied with something small. >> what does confucius say about

the individual? >> he didn't put much stock in the individual. what a lot of the philosophers believed was you have to have a system that would control the wayward impulses and appetites of the public because -- in some ways, i think the political leaders believe that. that is the inherent tension between what is so clearly the power of individuals who want to find their own sense of the good life and the state which still believes today that we can tell you what the chinese dream is. we know what it is. trust us. people say we are not sure we are ready to trust you. >> will the communist party survive? >> the party has been adaptable. it is much more adaptable and pragmatic than we thought it was. if i had to guess today what would happen, the communist

party will redefine itself in order to survive. meaning it has already shown it is not going to stay attached to communist economics. >> what's the biggest thing standing in the way of china being able to play a significant role in the world? have a global ambition and be accepted as a player? and be able to do the things it wants to do at home as well? >> one of the things that has been a surprise is that we expected china's soft power push was going to be effective. five or 10 years ago, we would be talking about the money they were spending on television and radio in africa and they were pushing their message very effectively. what you don't see today is that there are people in kenya, nigeria saying we want to adopt chinese political values. they say they want chinese investment, money. >> we sell the chinese our natural resources.

>> they also face the risk that our own politicians could be criticized for being in bed with the chinese. what i think has been a surprise and a hard thing for chinese the is to sell a persuasive political message. >> doesn't it go against the grain of how they have been conducting foreign-policy which has been described as agnostic? >> they are noninterventionist by nature because they don't want people to intervene at home. that also means they don't have an affirmative message to send. what they have is a practical message. >> a transactional relationship. >> i think there is something -- we don't really have all that much memory of when we had this moral glamour on the world stage. but, we did. i can tell you as somebody who has been living abroad for the past 11 years, the united states today, even in the complicated

moment in which we find ourselves -- we still represent something unusual in the world and something distinctive, something specific. some idea that we are the country and currency of last resort. china is not there yet. it is not yet articulating a message that people around the world say that is where i want to go. that will be the secret to success. >> is there a strong nationalistic force that has potential in china to rise and make china something different than it is? something more adventurous? something more aggressive? something that want to take advantage of its power? >> there is a nationalist movement of a certain kind. it is one that is driven not by an ideologically aggressive impulse. there was nobody in china today that is saying we should be conducting ethnic cleansing. that is important to distinguish because you hear these days in

southeast asia people say it feels to us like europe on the eve of world war ii. you have this powerful country that is claiming a larger share of territory. i think it is very important to i think it is very important to draw a distinction. >> we talking china or russia? >> the chinese would say they have a lot of problems with what they've seen in crimea. >> the love sovereignty. there is also this. we saw the economy go from double digits to a prediction of seven plus percent. you read stories about the possibility of a real estate bust. how do you see it and how do they see it? >> they are very aware of the short-term problems and the long-term problems. these days, over the last couple of years, the story has flipped completely. we talked about the kinds of brewing trouble in the economy. most of the time people would say that is the sideshow. the story has taken hold today that the chinese economic miracle is hitting the skids -- neither caricature was completely correct. china today still does have this

unusual political arrangement in which it holds the reigns over where money goes, where credit goes. they do have the power to be able to rein in the shadow banks which represent a significant threat to the financial security of the country. if there is a country that can manage to get itself through this real estate boon without the kind of crisis that follows, it is china. i think we need to acclimate ourselves to the days -- these 10% growth per year is over. >> had a nice run. >> had a great run. >> the book is called "age of ambition." back in a moment. stay with us. >> jo nesbo is here and is one of norway's biggest writers according to the "new yorker" magazine. he is the country's first international pop-culture star. his work belongs to the genre of crime fiction known as nordic noir. his best-selling series has sold 23 million copies.

he recently released his new thriller called "the son" about an imprisoned drug addict wrongly convicted of murder. welcome. this is an incredible story of you. a guy who had been a rock star, guy who is done so many things. then you find this great career as a writer. does it surprise you? >> well, i think it surprised me when -- at the age of 37, i wrote my first novel. but, it didn't surprise any of my friends or people around me. >> because they knew you had it in you? >> i have been a storyteller since i was young. i would actually write the lyrics for my friends' bands. i would write short stories. i was of the generation that still wrote letters.

>> can you characterize -- are norwegian crime novels different? do they have their own identity? >> i think it is hard for me as a norwegian -- there is a scandinavian crime tradition that stems back to the 1970's. swedish writers who would write political crime. but, more importantly, they would write really good crime novels. it would take the crime novel from the kiosk into the bookstores. that was when young talented writers started using the crime novel as a vehicle for their storytelling talents. it was probably more prestigious to write crime fiction in scandinavia during the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's than it was in other countries in europe. by the end of the 1990's, there were so many scandinavian writers and norwegian writers.

that is probably part of the reason why right now scandinavia is experiencing this huge interest in not only the novels, but tv series. >> television is opened up for you. that's a place where you will plant your flag. >> what is interesting in writing and storytelling right now, the boundaries between the novel and the movie and the tv series are becoming more and more blurred. you find there so many crossovers. a writer once said the novel can exist and have a right to exist only to the extent the novel is doing what only the novel can do but i disagree. i think what we see now is that novels are becoming more like

movies. movies are becoming more like novels. you see the hundred hour story of the tv series is becoming the next big thing. where we have probably the most cutting-edge storytelling right now which is if you had said that the people 10 years ago, they would not believe you. >> you think you could pretty much do anything you want to? your talent is multiple, beginning with writing. if you can write and sing, you have a career there. if you can write and have an imagination, that's another career. if you write and have political opinions, you have another career. it is a broad canvas. >> it boils down to storytelling.

you always tell stories as a journalist. you can use your storytelling abilities for so many things. you can be a politician. >> you have a narrative. >> you can tell stories. yes, i think it can, but i also see -- i see the need to focus. i trust filmmakers who try to make the same movie over and over again. thing that can make a difference. that can survive the creator. that is probably what i am trying to do. >> tell me about "the son."

it is a revenge fantasy, isn't it? >> it started two years ago. me and my friend were talking about jesus christ on the cross. we were talking about the creeds. i am not sure how the creed reads in english, but directly translated from norwegian, the last part reads "he is sitting by god and from there he will come back to judge the living and the dead." it sounds like the tagline for a great movie. >> yes, it does. it probably is. >> it probably is. and, i was thinking that this story here is a story not only about this lonely, lonely guy who has taken on him to do time for all the people's sins. two murders in this case. there is also this revenge story. someone who is bound to come back and that is exactly what

"the son" is going to do in the book. >> when you look at what he decides to do, what did you want to create in him? what did you want us to think about him? >> i want to manipulate you into investing in him as a protagonist emotionally. then, make him do things that will make you question your own morality. what you would've chosen yourself given the same dilemma.

that is what -- i think that is what we are looking for in stories. it is whether the main character, the one we are rooting for, will make the right moral choice. whether he is going to survive physically or solve the murder, that is interesting too. what we are really looking for is what is going to happen to his eternal soul. is he going to heaven or hell? if you also can make the reader sort of discover at some time in that you rooted for the wrong team. that you have been sort of part of a prison experiment. where you have people suddenly realizing they were capable of torturing the prisoners. normal people, that they were

capable of evil. then, i had at least for short while put up a mirror for my readers and say, are you sure you're the right one to judge? >> when you write a novel like this, are you thinking in your head a movie? >> i am not. i have been part of a generation where i have seen much more movies than i have read books. inevitably, you will get influenced by the rhythm and the way the movie is constructed. the three act structure of the movie. i do see that my stories are

formatted. they have that written into it. >> this is from an op-ed you wrote -- "it is possible that yours truly is just a sick deviant who ended up writing gory crime novels instead of what may be seen as the alternative to everyone's benefit. it is possible a pretty normal individual who enjoys these fantasies to savor the feeling of relief and restore harmony that a fitting revenge affords the average civilized person?" which are you? or both? >> i think i am both. [laughter] >> it is nice the audience thinks that way. >> the difficult thing about writing articles about your own

viewpoints or doing interviews like this or for that sake playing in a band is that the storyteller could become the story. in my case and most writers' case, that is a boring story. i like to just put out things and make the reader judge for themselves. sometimes people will get provoked by what i put in my character's mouth. i like to make heroes that are unlikely heroes. use storytelling techniques to make the bad guys, protagonist, and vice versa. it makes for more interesting stories and more interesting reading. >> norwegian prisons are unknown to americans who probably have put more people in prison than any other culture. are norwegian prisons different? more humane? more -- less punishing?

>> they probably are. i don't know american prisons in detail. for that sake, i don't know norwegian prisons -- >> how do you know them? >> i spent a little time in a prison. and, the problem -- warner brothers bought the rights and had some directors look at it. >> the directors said what? >> they said the only problem with it is it uses a norwegian prison. we don't have prisons like that in the united states.

>> what is your idea of punishment? is it darker than your country? >> i am not sure i have a clear idea of punishment. i think that is a difficult question to answer. what is punishment and what should punishment be? >> what is occupied about? >> "occupied" is a norwegian tv series.

i had that idea a long time ago. my idea was that what do you think made stories where we could put some questions on the table? for example, what if norway has a modern democracy was occupied? the occupier would allow us the same privileges that we have had for years like we could go to barcelona or a week of shopping. we could seemingly have the same tv programs. we would have the same standard of living. if we could keep those things, what would we be willing to sacrifice? freedom and independence, what to does really mean?

this is because norway was occupied during the second world war by germany. many of the heroes in modern norwegian history is from the second world war. how would our generation act in the same situation? now, i did -- when i wrote the outline for the story, i had russia occupying norway. right now, that seems like -- i knew what was going to happen in ukraine. >> where was your ambition? how do you see it connecting all

the dots? >> i think as a storyteller, my ambition is to be able to write something truly original. to say something that has has not been said before. of course, that is extremely ambitious. i don't think i have been able to do that yet, but i have to keep that ambition. i have to have something that will make me get up in the morning. i think just doing that, write something that lasts longer. >> nice to have you in new york. >> thanks. >> congratulations. jo nesbo and the book is called "the son." back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

>> fred krupp is here. for 29 years he has been the president of the environmental defense fund. he has put his focus on shale, becoming a voice on the debate on fracking. the surge in domestic oil and gas production has made the u.s. the world's fastest-growing hydrocarbon producer. despite economic benefits, fracking poses potential risks to the environment. he and mike bloomberg wrote an april 29 new york times op-ed about fracking. about fracking. he also wrote an essay titled "don't just drill, baby. drill carefully." welcome back. what is shale? >> it is a formation of rock

that years ago, long time ago trapped inside of it in many cases both oil and natural gas depending on which shale formation and other hydrocarbons. for a long time, nobody knew how to get either of those fossil fuels out of it in an economic way, but over the last decade or so, people have figured out if you drill down and drill horizontal, and crack it open, you can extract the resource. >> where is the debate? >> the debate is over the fact while shale gas it is a tremendous economic boon for the united states and has environmental benefits as well in that when natural gas is burned, it is a lot less sulfur, a lot less particulates, and even half the carbon dioxide of burning coal. >> one half of the amount of co2 by burning coal?

>> yes, when you burn natural gas. despite those benefits, including more jobs, lower prices for electricity for americans, a renaissance of manufacturing in this country. despite that, there are major problems, real problems and very legitimate concerns with the way we have gone about exploiting shale. >> what is the concern? >> the concern is that it has been done in a very sloppy way in some cases. it has contaminated water, not from the fractures, but from spills at the surface where chemicals get into people's -- or air pollution coming out of these wells that has sometimes made people sick. i was in washington county, pennsylvania, not long ago and i

met a woman who told me a story that she had been forced to move out of her farm. her son was living down the street safely away from the noxious fumes. and to be able to get on a school bus, she was living temporarily out of her car. there are real problems lie have seen. >> your argument is that those problems can be handled? >> yes, they can be handled. unfortunate, many in industry stop there because the fact that they can in some alternate universe be handled does not mean that we are handling them right. because there are 6000 operators, thousands of operators, is going to take not a few operators doing things right -- we have those.

it is going to take laws and compliance with those laws in order to protect the neighbors and protect the atmosphere because the fact that gas when burned commits have to carbon dioxide is not the end of the global warming story. it turns out that even small amounts of methane, methane is natural gas, that leak into the atmosphere anywhere from the well to the burner tip, those undermined the carbon dioxide advantage. because methane is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide over

the first 20 years it is released. that means to be better than coal, it has to be kept less than 2.5% of the product that we take out of the ground, we have to keep it below that to have an advantage. >> are you trying to serve as a middle ground in this debate? >> no, i am trying to advocate for the citizens that live around these wells and recognize the fact that shale gas is a fact of life in america. it is being exploited. we have got to protect people who live around it. their right to clean water and clean air. we have got to protect the atmosphere. we have to harvest whatever climate advantage there is over coal by keeping the weak grade of methane down. >> some people like to say that you are the one person in the environmental field that speaks to corporate america. that somehow you of a

relationship with them and have some influence with them. >> i think a lot of people in the community speak to corporate america, not just me. i think what we recognize is that this is a fact of life and wishing it away is not going to happen even if we at the environmental defense fund are for rapid deployment of solar, wind power. though sources of energy have come down way in price. we have huge programs to push those truly clean energy sources out, pedal to the metal on renewables. at the same time, even if we stopped using natural gas as a fuel in america tomorrow, two thirds of the natural gas we take out of the ground is being used in manufacturing. is being used to heat and cool homes and buildings. it is important to clean it up even as we try to accelerate renewables. >> one guest after another comes to the table and talks about it.

jessica matthews was the most recent. talking about it has to do with a tax on carbon. >> well, there is no question that the burning of fossil fuels has a lot of external costs. until we put a price on carbon and a limit on the amount of these gases they go into the atmosphere, we are not going to get it right. the principle of capping omissions and letting entrepreneurs figure out how to meet those caps is a good principle. it works really well with sulfur. we cannot be wedded to one particular approach. we need to figure out how to minimize gase. what it turns out that most people don't know is that of the

global warming that is being caused by today's omissions, half of that is being caused not by carbon dioxide, but by these short-lived climate pollutants. of that half, methane is two thirds of that, the most important. it turns out that right now we have a tremendous opportunity to take a bite out of america's footprint on global warming by reducing emissions of methane from oil and gas. >> we do that by? >> a general in colorado said he did it by saying that environmental defense fund, i wanted to sit down with the three major energy producers and figure out a way to clean up the air.

>> were they willing to do that? >> they were. they understood that they want to operate in a responsible way and win back public support and confidence. together, we crafted a real breakthrough. the toughest regulations in the country. >> they said we could live with this? >> they all said that and it turns out these regulations will take 200,000 tons of conventional air pollutants and methane, about 100,000 each, out of the air. the brown cloud that denver had been doing such a good job minimizing has been growing with the drilling and now will shrink again thanks to the new regulation. the methane emissions will be reduced by somewhere between a third and 40%. that is how you do it. it turns out that methane emissions, one of the biggest global warming pollutants, could be reduced by 40% at a cost of

just a penny per thousand cubic feet of produced gas. >> weren't you on a committee to recommend how to make it environmentally safe -- fracking? >> yes, in 2011, we issued a report on a safe path forward for natural gas. there has been some progress but not enough. >> on a different issue, do you support the keystone pipeline? >> no. i am with the rest of the environmental community on this. it is a move backward to very carbon intensive fuel. i can't think of a worse way to make petroleum products. the fact of the matter is in america, thanks to fracking, we have more oil than we have refining capacity. when it was originally contemplated, might have been a national security arguement, that is no longer

the case. >> how do you assess president obama's environmental policies and what he has been able to achieve? >> the president has been a leader on climate change and i think he is getting more focused on it. in the first term, he was able to double the miles per gallon standard for cars. that is one of the big sources of greenhouse gases. now, he is absolutely committed to issuing epa regulations on power plants which is 40% of america's carbon pollution. >> is there a race between finding solutions, being able to extract shale gas in a safe way, and the velocity of global warming? the race between being able to find that before global warming exercises a serious impact beyond now. >> there is a race against time to deploy a maximum solar,

maximum wind, energy efficiency. >> is there anything holding back the efficiency? >> yes. we have a company -- more than one company that are putting solar panels on people's homes. the company pays for it. you get a contract to buy electricity for less than the utility would sell it. that business model is not allowed in florida. we need to clear away the thicket that is impeding florida. >> is it because of the power of the energy companies lobbying? tell me how big the edf is. >> we spent $120 million last year. we have 500 people deployed in america. about 30 in beijing.

you have to let folks in china and we are working with the people in china. >> people told me that the president of china said he has three things he has to do. one, to clean up the air. two, he has to clean up corruption. and three, he asked the economy on a sustainable footing by turning it from a exporting economy to a demand economy. >> that is consistent with everything i know from the folks in beijing. the people and the government are serious and taking strong measures to clean up the air. i would not bet against them. when they set out to do something, the chinese government, they tend to get it done. >> because it is not a democracy?

>> they meet their goals in a five-year year plan and they set some strong goals. >> i think they tie that to the survivability of the party. >> it is a political system. as increasing number of americans want environmental cleanup, 85% of people under 30 want -- >> what is the problem? articulate the problem. >> i think the politicians have to catch up with the people. i think they will do that in the united states -- >> do you think they will do that in the 2014 elections? >> i think environmental issues are becoming -- >> here is the point. the president campaigned for the environment in 2008. here is a guy who won with a significant victory and a democratic congress. >> the president had a priority in health care. i might have picked a different priority, but it took a long time to get that legislation passed. we ran out of time. but, in laws like the civil rights movement in the united states, there were a lot of different attempts to pass

strong civil rights legislation. the first eight passed the most, the weakest, sort of bills. these are things that take time. because we have one shot and we didn't make it, doesn't mean that we won't in the future. we will because the future of our country and our economy depends on it. >> thank you for coming. >> thank you. ♪

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you have to look for that one